The Origin Of Slavery In Africa

But I tell you; the world we live in today is far more civilized and somewhat peaceful than it ever had been since the beginning of time. As I had mentioned in my first article regarding this topic, the origin of slavery, not only in Africa but worldwide, is traceable as far back as the beginning of time.

Long before the 7th century AD, when the Trans-Saharan and East African Slave Trades became widely known, prehistoric slavery existed as a way of life in Africa. There were many legitimate ways one could possess slaves at that point in time. Slavery in Africa, among the black Africans those days wasn't a bad thing at all! 

Families were at liberty selling their own children to pay debts or purchase livestock during hard times. Of course, land wasn't purchased by then but rather communally allocated to families according to their need.

And that’s basically where the issue of owning a large number of slaves had originated from because land distribution to families in terms of their need for more land was carried out or simply determined by the number of workers any given family could put to work on the land. So in order to get more land, one or rather a family had to employ more workers or legally obtain more slaves!

And of course, in the African context, there was no difference between ordinary workers and slaves; they were both treated with respect to a point where they even felt like family members. Traditional African practices of slavery only changed drastically at the beginning of the 7th century when Arab Muslims started exploiting the black Africans by forcefully enslaving them. And such exploitation continued running from the 7th up to the 20th century, as Arab Muslims traded for black African slaves in West, Central, and East Africa, sending over hundred thousands of slaves each year to North Africa and far distant parts of Asia.

Nonetheless, the story changed again in the 15th century when European explorers and traders arrived in West Africa, finding a lucrative slavery business going on at every corner, therefore they followed suit and started using the well-refined slave-trade networks like everybody else. As a result, the trans-Saharan and East African slave trades became eclipsed by the Atlantic slave trade to the extent where people started forgetting how the story had started! And today only well taught historians and philosophers do still remember how the story of slavery in Africa had started!

And that’s why it hurts to people who know these things, seeing and hearing people like my big sister talking about nothing but the Atlantic slave trade! And not only that, but many people today when they think of slavery, they only picture the form in which it existed in the United States and nothing more! I really can’t remember hearing anybody talking bad things about the Brazilian or any other form of slavery but the American version. After all, there is absolutely nothing the American slave traders did that the British or Brazilians, not to mention the Arab Muslims themselves didn't do in terms of abusing the Africans or rather slaves! So abhorring the Americans as if they are the only ones representing Caucasian races is somewhat misguided if I may say so!  

(To be continued)… whenever I get a chance, after all, I don’t enjoy this topic very much! I am just doing it for the sake of helping people like my big sister, that’s all!